Tag Archives: pens

Pens are delightfully old school. And yet there are still times when they’re needed, like when you have to sign a check or fill out a customs declaration form. Now, the fundamental trifecta of pocket items includes the following: a wallet, keys, a smartphone. Notice the lack of pens from this group. But with the Card Pen, you can have a clever pen that’s about as thin as a quarter and is small enough to fit in a standard wallet. The ink cartridge is retractable, in a way, and the whole thing is customizable so you can use it as a business card. On Kickstarter now, $15 will get you two blank ones, while $30 will have them engraved.

What on earth can you possibly do with one string and 3 frets? Not much of course, unless there’s a bit of digital magic thrown in. The FretPen is a fully functional writing instrument, but it’s also a smartphone-connected one-string guitar. You clearly won’t be able to recreate Slash’s solos from November Rain, but a tiny D-pad on the pen does allow you to switch strings on the fly, giving you the ability to play scale-like runs and some forms of rudimentary melodies. If you watch the video below you’ll get a sense of the device’s capabilities. There’s a Kickstarter campaign launching on the 22nd, so if this piques your interest, feel free to give them your email address to be notified when they’re ready to accept your pledges.

With midterms in full swing across many a university, we wish we’d heard about these see-through highlighters last year, when word first came out. Better late than never, we’d like you guys to take a look at the Uni Promark View Highlighters. They do what any suck instrument normally does, only better. The tip is made from clear acrylic, which means you can actually see the text you’re about to highlight, allowing you to stop just at the right spot.

Sure, it’s not a problem that any student ever complained about, but considering these don’t cost much more than regular highlighters, you can think of it as a convenience you never knew you’d like having. They’re made by Mitsubishi Pencil Corp. (who knew?) and it’s $15 for a pack of 5.

If you’re on a search to find a click pen that won’t fail you when you need to write some stuff down on the go or in a rush, then the Mover and the Shaker pens might just be what you’re looking for. Designed and made by Tactile Turn, these custom-machined pens have a body made from 7075 Aluminum, while the clips are 301 Spring Steel.

It’s the little things. Like integrating a simple design element into an old product that unexpectedly makes it, well… better? We don’t want to say more useful, because frankly, the Yulasha pen still just writes like a regular pen. But because it has a weight along its side, it doesn’t roll off a flat surface like normal pens tend to do. It’s like that inflatable clown you used to have as a kid, the one that you’d knock over only to have it stand back up again and give you nightmares? Yeah, like that but on a pen.

Anyway, that’s it about the pen. If you still don’t get how this works, check out the video below. It’ll be available for $3, but we’re not sure in which market. Probably Japan.

OhGizmo! is a frequently updated blog that focuses on covering items that will appeal to a very specific and often very passionate audience: the geek. Aside from the fare of innovative consumer electronic products, the reader can expect to find news about geek culture, absurd inventions, awe inspiring technology, and an ever growing assortment of articles that we like to think fit within our view of what we’re calling the Geek Lifestyle.